Vienna bakery
We tried the tarte au citron – our lips pursed like a homophobic’s bum in a gay club from the citrus tang, and the pastry is deliciously buttery.
VIENNA BAKERY PROFESSIONAL
The display case is filled with everything that a wet dream made in France would contain: Éclair, Pain au chocolat, Tarte au Citron, Mille-feuille, Brioche, Feuille abricot, Tarte aux pommes – all made by a professional pâtissier from France. The dainty, hand-crafted, and neatly presented chocolatey and sweet tarts, eclairs, and other pimped pastries will have your mouth watering, no matter if you’ve just eaten an entire cow on the way there (why you might have done that, we’re not sure). If you haven’t been to the French Pâtisserie, Tart’aTata, before we strongly advise you to prepare for your first visit by tucking a napkin into your shirt collar. Including the authentic handmade French baguette (and the mini one for 95 cents), and the selection of great breakfast pastries, like the brioche, pain au chocolat, pain au raisins, and La Mercerie’s bona fide croissant. And what makes the baked treats at La Mercerie even more special is that everything (except the éclairs that come from France), is made from scratch, on the premises. We say ‘if’ as you’ll find it hard to convince your attention to wander from what sits in the cabinet.Ī range of authentic, fresh French baked goods is presented as proud as the French in the cabinet. There’s an old wooden exterior encasing the place, and if you look down, you’ll find beautiful old tiles covering the floor.
Once you find yourself sitting in the garden out front, or inside looking out the window, you’ll know you’ve achieved that state of being that the French live by – eat, love, laugh and live well, and often. Today, Vienna Bakery uses spring leaves fresh from a farm up the road from the bakehouse at Rue Des Prés in St Saviour.La Mercerie is a true Parisian bistro located right in the midst of one of Vienna’s most charming areas, the Servietenviertel of the 9th district. Temps passé, when each farm had its own bread oven, bread was baked sitting on a cabbage leaf to prevent the crust from burning, to keep the bread moist and to infuse it with its distinctive local flavour. Vienna Bakery also maintains the centuries-old Jersey tradition of baking on the ceramic oven sole, with cabbage loaves and the crumb roll (known in England as a London bloomer) - and Jersey wonders, ‘des mèrvelles’, a rich twisted doughnut. The Dodge family still devotes the same time and pays an equal amount of attention to sourcing the most authentic ingredients as it does to baking, because provenance is as important as freshness, quality and taste. In Jersey, France or anywhere in the world, the principles of craft baking are the same find the finest ingredients, ferment the dough slowly, bake thoroughly, serve it fresh and make it every day. The skills passed down through generations of master European bakers and learned by Bob, as an apprentice with J Lyons and Co in 1930s’ London, are employed to this day to ensure the quality and freshness of all Vienna Bakery products. Vienna Bakery was founded in Georgetown, St Saviour, in 1961 by Bob Dodge. The bakery at Rue Des Prés Trading Estate at Longueville, in the parish of St Saviour, is a hive of activity seven days a week producing the hundreds of products supplied to the shop in St Helier's Victorian Central Market and supermarkets, corner shops, hotels, restaurants and pubs across the Island. It is a family-run business that combines the age-old skills of bread making by hand, baking fresh every day, with the techniques of a modern bakery. Vienna Bakery is Jersey’s traditional craft bakery - where it takes almost 24 hours to make a loaf of bread and you’ll find nearly 20 variations of a French stick.